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Advice For Poets 8: Why Be A Poet?

We’ve been working at giving you a lot of poetry advice lately, but now we’ve started asking – why should you be a poet at all?

(Private) Self Expression

It’s a bit of an obvious one, but sometimes you need to just let it all out. If you’re not comfortable with sharing your poetry then nobody else need ever see it. It can help you figure out how you feel, and also help you get better at expressing those feelings.

If you do decide to share your stuff with the world, you’re sharing a piece of who you really are, and this can feel great. You can also use your words to send a message, make a point, or start a revolution if you want to! Exploring how to express yourself can also translate into your everyday life. Someone who thinks deeply about how they feel and how to express those feelings is likely to be a more communicative individual – broody, artistic personality aside, of course.

It’s Fun

Enough said – the act of sitting down to write poetry is a fun thing that you can do for free (or the cost of a pencil, anyway.)

Poetic Therapy

The therapeutic benefits of poetry for people who are depressed or traumatised can be huge. It can help people come to terms with an illness, or for patients that suffer a degenerative disease, it can go some way towards keeping their minds active.